Devices to disintegrate foods are very common today. Such devices include, but are not limited to: juicers, blenders, and food processors. Essentially, these devices feed foods, including, but not limited to, fruits and vegetables, into a machine which mechanically disintegrates the foods. Many of these devices have feed chutes. Also shared in common by many of these devices is a rotating shredder element which chops and/or grinds the foods.
One of the most common devices to disintegrate foods is the centrifugal type juicer. These devices typically have a generally vertical feed chute which is open at the top and terminates at its open lower end just above a motor powered horizontal shredding disc. Most of these shredding discs are simply flat plates with sharp protrusions facing upward. As food is fed through the feed chute, it is pushed by gravity and/or by a hand powered pusher plunger placed facing downward at the top of the chute. These pushing forces propel the food onto the top of the shredding disc where the sharp upward facing protrusions grind apart the food.
The shredded food is propelled outward radially from the center of the shredding disc by centrifugal force, until the shredded food hits a filter screen which is formed in the shape of an inverted truncated cone with its broader face being open and directed upwards. The truncated cone is attached to the shredding disc along the cone's lower smaller face which is positioned resting against the outer perimeter of the shredding disc.
The rotation of the truncated cone filter screen through centrifugal force, forces liquids, including juices, through the filter screen and into a collection vessel, while simultaneously directing solids, such as pulp, to be propelled diagonally upward, outward, and over the upper perimeter edge of the open broader face of the truncated cone, where it is collected in a collection bin.
The net result of the above actions is the separation of liquids from solids within the foods.
These centrifugal juicers are inexpensive to produce. They also produce juice relatively quickly when compared to other designs. However, typically they have several shortcomings.
To begin with, their truncated conical filter screens load up very quickly with pulp which reduces their efficiency and is very difficult to clean, especially if the pulp clogged in the screens is not cleaned immediately after juicing.
Also, even though there have been great strides in recent years in increasing the size of the feed chutes, and thus decreasing food preparation time because foods no longer have to be cut to a small size compared to using a small feed chute, some food cutting preparation is still required for larger foods.
Ironically, the new larger feed chutes found on newer centrifugal juicers, which offer convenience to juicer users, also introduce a safety hazard to the same users because the size of the new chutes is large enough to allow a child's hand to pass through the chute and into contact with the rapidly rotating shredder disc.
A further typical disadvantage of current centrifugal juicers is that a liquid collecting receptacle must be placed adjacent to the juicer to catch juices immediately as the juice is produced, because these juicers generally do not have any onboard ability to collect and store juices.
These juice collecting receptacles usually have the disadvantage that fresh juices collected within them typically separate within a few minutes thus losing their fresh taste and pleasing appearance. This is because there is generally nothing within or about such receptacles to mix and/or agitate the freshly made juice to prevent separation from occurring or to mix the juice once separation has occurred.
Further, many centrifugal type juicers have low pour spouts which don't permit normal height glasses to be placed beneath them. Such juicers must rely on resting on a wood block or other such pedestal to fill normal height glasses, or the user must find and use a special receptacle which has a low height upper rim which can fit below the pour spout.
Those juicers that have pour spouts which are high enough to fill a normal height glass, are generally difficult to store due to the juicer's height.
In addition, many juicers force their users to waste precious time before removing their glass while waiting for the juicer's pour spouts to stop dripping after juice has been dispensed.
Another typical disadvantage of current centrifugal type juicers is that particles of the foods fed down the feed chute can hit the fast spinning shredding disc and be thrown back at high speed through the feed chute at the juicer user causing messes on the user and/or adjacent countertops, as well as resulting in a safety hazard to the juicer user from being hit by fast-moving ejected food particles.
Centrifugal type juicers also can get jammed on food because there is no way to move the food around in relationship to the shredding disc. The only option offered by most centrifugal type juicers to free food jammed within the feed chute is to push down harder on the juicer's pusher plunger. Such pushing may relieve the problem, or it may compact the food within the chute and make the problem worse.
Juicing efficiency within juicers is always an issue because it affects the cost of juice produced. Centrifugal juicers are only moderately efficient when compared with other designs, because they leave significant amounts of juice and moisture within their waste. This efficiency is reduced as mentioned earlier when the truncated cone filter screen becomes filled with pulp. Efficiency is also lost because shredding of the food within a centrifugal juicer takes place in only one stage so any juice which is not extracted at this first and only stage is permanently lost.
Many of the disadvantages of centrifugal juicers are shared in common with other food preparation devices such as, but not limited to, blenders and food processors. Such disadvantages include, but are not limited to, issues involving feeding foods into the device, extracting processed foods from the device, the height of ejector chutes, as well as other safety, use and storage issues.
The example embodiments described herein are designed to address many known problems, including, but not limited to, those listed above, found in many of today's food preparation devices. Some of the embodiments described herein also go beyond this to suggest improvements on the functionality of food preparation devices.